


We Shall Bear Its Weight Together

by jackmarlowe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 02:35:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3552818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackmarlowe/pseuds/jackmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Jango panics: was it soft to want a daughter, and a relief to have a son?</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Shall Bear Its Weight Together

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Star Wars fic in a very long time, and as a result my Extended Universe is extremely rusty/gets more of a token mention than the basis of this little thing. Apologies if my Mando'a is off.
> 
> I should also warn you that whilst I'm trans, imagining a trans clone child in this universe was slightly harder than I imagined - as a result, there's some brief misgendering and mention of a medical transition.
> 
> The title is from 'Vode An', a traditional Mandalorian song adopted for clone trooper training.

His father repeats himself often, deliberate as the rhythm of the song the soldiers echo in his voice, so he remembers. He learns to recite, lodges specific memories in the corners of each score and pockmark in the hull of his father’s ship, knows when to repeat aloud and when to stay silent. When he is a little older, he realises his father’s repetition comes in part from a deep-set anxiety that what he leaves will not be permanent; it is only when his voice begins to change that it occurs to him his father was afraid, and perhaps still is.

His growing up is a process of learning to exchange.

Jango Fett is at first made profoundly uneasy by his only child’s initial grasps for information as soon as questions start coming naturally: what’s a mom, what makes the ship go, is there anyone else like us that doesn’t look like us. Some questions that other curious children might have simply do not come up – Jango’s own armour is an accepted second skin, the worn helmet as familiar and comforting as a spoken word, and it rains because it always has. Initially he hesitates with most answers out of habit. The Kaminoans who come in and out of their lives occasionally remind him, dreamy and untouchable, to be patient, advice that he repeats to himself until he feels stupid and slow with the loop of it. Jango can see his child learning not to ask, though, and so tries sometimes to be a father the way this planet would have it.

When the child is six, he explains what happened to his own parents, and is patient, patient as the questions turn too quickly from the event itself to what his mother was like – how she sounded, what her name was, what they did together. A year later, his offspring cries in her sleep for weeks until she makes the unprecedented-since-infancy crawl into bed alongside him and explains that her name and making, so precious and carefully crafted, _Ayla_ and the only daughter of Kamino’s ever-growing family, are wrong. There are no patient words for this; Jango can only listen, pace when his son – he repeats it to himself so he won’t stumble in front of anyone else – refuses to cut his hair, beat his hands bloody in the training centre, watch as Boba, who unknowingly discards precious names his father offers up from the dead, _Jaster_ and _Myles_ , accepts injections from the medical droid unflinching save for his lower lip. There is briefly a question of surgery and Jango lets Boba, nine now, run his small hands over the scars on his back and explains in as few short words as possible why the ship is called _Slave_. Boba listens gravely and says he’ll take his own scars if he needs them. It begins to look like a genuine exchange: his past for the boy’s future, a father for a son.

Once, after the treatment starts to change the shape of Boba’s face, Jango loses him briefly in a mass of boys in training tunics looking eagerly back at him with their hands clenched into identical fists, mirroring their parent. Boba sees his face shift and takes a small, wordless step forward, a gesture that stays between them as the other boys disapprovingly eye his break from formation. _Here, Dad_.

The reassurance that he is not like the others both delights him and bites like a rancor. Boba wants to see himself on every face for the angles of their jaws, the identical spans of their chests, the way they assume his father’s shape and gait so fast and easy save for Jango’s occasional limp; he worries, still, that he’ll grow the way of his artificial design regardless of the treatment. At the same time, he is fiercely proud of what is his and not theirs – their armour is not his father’s, which Jango says, showing him how the knee plates join together and fitting his fingers over the slots for the blades there, will be his someday, because they are Mando’ade. The words for one another in the second of his father's languages do not change with his name. _Buir_ and _ad’ika_ are all encompassing terms: Jango is mother and father, and Boba a son only by virtue of how his father now inflects the word. The soldiers are neither his brothers nor his father’s children. Boba knows this with the certainty of the weather.

Jango sees and knows no difference in how he treats his son, though it’s impossible to say how that is beyond the context of the profession. By eight years old, Boba can pilot _Slave I_ out of atmosphere, navigate hyperspace, apply a bacta patch, disable a tall man in six different ways, and claim a bounty. He knows not to cry when he falls down, trust an initial figure from the Hutts, or talk in public places, though he sees few of those. On the few occasions Jango brings him along, he catches Boba watching his hands as he speaks, unconsciously mimicking how he shifts his weight, tapping the ship’s yoke twice the way he inherited some decades ago. Handsome kid, a Twi’lek leers in an Outer Rim repsulsorlift. That yours? Boba smiles at the obvious answer, for which he later gets a telling off – he forgets other people can’t tell when his father has his other face on, that Mandalorian armour does not clone like humans, and that he can be a weakness.

Sometimes Jango panics: was it soft to want a daughter, and a relief to have a son? He embarrasses himself expressing this to Zam Wesell once, a rare few drinks in at a Coruscant bar, to which she pulls a face and flashes a Clawdite transformation into his own scowling self, mocking his masculine absurdity with his own scarred face of which he now knows every age incarnation. Having anyone’s an equal liability, she says, blinking back to her female human face with a lazy stretch. I wouldn’t know, but you can afford it, probably, of all people. And don’t you dare say anything like that to Boba, or I’ll feed your insides to a gundark.

To his credit, he never does.

They have so many rules, an outsider would lose track writing them down. Don’t speak to strangers. Don’t leave weapons where people can see them. Don’t open the door without checking and putting your back to the wall. Always count the money before you leave. Never trust a Jedi. Don’t jump to hyperspace without a second jump plan in the nav computer. Don’t tell anyone your real name. Don’t tell anyone you’re my son unless you know you can trust them. Use your judgement. Know your-my-our enemies. You’re better than I was at your age, Jango tells him. Don’t let someone catch you out like this, or this. (He tells him now, when he asks, both the stories he needs to hear and the ones he wants to tell, though they are rarely the same). In turn, Boba asks and tells as he’s been taught, and although there’s a rhythm to it he still so often catches Jango with that same dangerous flighty jolt a jetpack gives a beginner or his misstep in the bar with Zam gave him. Don’t call me that. Tell me when you’ll be back. Can I come this time? Do you want me to shoot, Dad? Will you be okay?

They’ll make good partners, both of them agree in place of saying other things, when he grows up his father’s son.


End file.
